Land acquisition is big business

April 3, 2008|By John R. Smith

Once upon a time, in Palm Beach County's shining city on a hill, our elected officials suited up as knights in shining armor and rode out on white horses to smite the taxmongers at the county gate. They kept at bay the tax-and-spend government juggernaut.

But that was long ago and time moves on. Smiting the tax barbarians is a distant memory, as government escalates its newest scheme to divorce you from the hard-earned bucks in your wallet. What we're talking about here is using tax money to buy oodles of land.

This is not a new practice. Did you know that government at all levels already owns over half the acreage in Palm Beach County? Yes, over half. Data from the County Planning Division and Property Appraiser's Office reveals this startling statistic. But as a coercive monopoly, government wants more.

A county commissioner has proposed an additional sales tax to pay $61 million for land "acquisition and management" costs. It all started in the 1990s, when two referendums raised more than $150 million to buy land for conservation purposes. Buying this much land causes unending problems, of course, because funds must then be raised for upkeep, to "manage and restore" the land purchased, drainage, and to "enhance the ecosystems" on the land. This requires perpetual annual expenses for the taxpayer.

Using our money to buy land is a bottomless swamp. In fact, the South Florida Water Management District announced it had spent $30 million of our money to buy the Brady Ranch so they could "flood it to make a government-owned swamp." And even though there's a downturn in our state's economy and money is tight, environmentalists are seeking $600 million to "purchase more land under Florida Forever," Florida's land acquisition program.

How much public land does government really need? Is it smart to buy land when our public funds are limited? Shouldn't we be content to enjoy the land that government already has bought? As public relations consultant, Keyna Cory says, "To protect our state's natural beauty," we need to make sure that the lands already owned by government are well managed.

Here we are, trying to make ends meet with rising property taxes and soaring insurance premiums, and politicians are digging our hole deeper. Let's call it government's Five G Tax Plan for Land Buying: Gobbling, Gorging, Gulping, Grasping and Guzzling.

It's an unwise misuse of funds to spend taxpayer dollars to purchase land that is not required for any defensible public purpose. Certainly, such expenditures go beyond government's three essential purposes: public safety, education and "infrastructure," a policy-wonk word for the permanent installation of roads, sewers and bridges.

I was told not long ago that if you draw a line straight across Florida, east to west, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico, and the line is at the southern tip of Lake Okeechobee, governments own over 50 percent of all the land south of that line. This area includes Fort Lauderdale, Miami, Fort Myers, Naples and south Palm Beach County. Remember these facts.

When government owns land, it moves off the tax rolls, which means that the rest of us must pay more. And when government takes such huge amounts of land out of private hands, leaving smaller amounts available to build on, home-building is curtailed dramatically. This produces heavy demands for housing, which forces land values and building costs for homes to skyrocket on the private land that remains. Zooming values mean higher taxes, and leaves no incentive to build workforce/affordable homes. This is a major reason why many people can no longer afford to live in our county.

Here is my request to government: Give some of your ample land to the poor as homesteads, to begin a new chapter in their lives. It will work out great for you, because then you can impose taxes on them, too.

Where are the knights in shining armor when you need them?

John R. Smith is chairman of Palm Beach County's BizPac and owner of a financial services company.